AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

conscription. He was fully acquitted on
appeal on 12 July and immediately released.
On 20 July, journalist Pavel Sheremet was
killed by a bomb planted in his car in the
capital Kyiv. No perpetrators had been
identified by the end of the year. The
investigation into the killing of journalist Oles
Buzina, shot dead by two masked gunmen in
2015, had likewise yielded no results.
Journalists with pro-Ukrainian views or
reporting for Ukrainian media outlets were
not able to operate openly in separatistcontrolled
areas and Crimea. A Russian crew
from the independent Russian Dozhd TV
channel was arrested in Donetsk and
deported to Russia by the Ministry of State
Security after recording an interview with a
former separatist commander.
In Crimea, independent journalists were
unable to work openly. Journalists from
mainland Ukraine were denied access and
turned back at the de facto border. Local
journalists and bloggers critical of the
Russian occupation and illegal annexation of
Crimea risked prosecution, and few dared to
express their views. Mykola Semena, a
veteran journalist, was investigated under
“extremism” charges (facing up to seven
years’ imprisonment if convicted) and placed
under travel restrictions. He had published
an article online under a pseudonym in
which he supported the “blockade” of
Crimea by pro-Ukrainian activists as
a necessary measure for the peninsula to be
“returned back” to Ukraine. He was officially
designated as a “supporter of extremism”,
and his bank account was frozen. At the end
of the year, the investigation into his case was
ongoing.
RIGHTS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL,
TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE
On 19 March, a court in Lviv, western
Ukraine, banned the holding of the LGBTI
Festival of Equality in the street due to public
safety concerns. The organizers moved the
event indoors, but on 20 March the venue
was attacked by a group of masked rightwing
activists. No injuries were reported but
the organizers were forced to cancel the
event.
An LGBTI Pride march, supported by the
Kyiv authorities and heavily protected by
police, was held in central Kyiv on 12 June.
With around 2,000 participants, it became
the largest-ever event of its kind in Ukraine. 6
CRIMEA
None of the enforced disappearances that
followed the Russian occupation were
effectively investigated. Ervin Ibragimov,
member of the World Congress of Crimean
Tatars, was forcibly disappeared near his
home in Bakhchisaray, central Crimea, on 24
May. Available video footage from a security
camera shows uniformed men forcing Ervin
Ibragimov into a minivan and driving him
away. An investigation was opened, but no
progress had been made at the end of the
year. 7
Freedoms of expression, association and
peaceful assembly, already heavily restricted,
were further reduced. Some of the
independent media that had been forced to
relocate to mainland Ukraine in earlier years
had access to their websites blocked by the
de facto authorities in Crimea. On 7 March,
the mayor of Crimean capital Simferopol
banned all public assemblies except those
organized by the authorities.
Ethnic Crimean Tatars continued to bear
the brunt of the de facto authorities’
campaign to eliminate all remaining vestiges
of pro-Ukrainian dissent. 8 The Mejlis of the
Crimean Tatar People, a body elected at an
informal assembly, Kurultai, to represent the
community, was suspended on 18 April and
banned by a court as “extremist” on 26 April.
Its banning was upheld by the Supreme
Court of the Russian Federation on 29
September. 9
The trial continued of the Mejlis’ deputy
leader, Ahtem Chiygoz, on trumped-up
charges of organizing “mass disturbances”
on 26 February 2014 in Simferopol (a
predominantly peaceful rally on the eve of the
Russian occupation, marked by some
clashes between pro-Russian and pro-
Ukrainian demonstrators). Held in a pre-trial
378 Amnesty International Report 2016/17